Cogswell Game Design Engineering Student Applies for 16th Patent

SUNNYVALE, CA – Christian Sasso, a current game design engineering student at Cogswell College, a 600-student educational institution offering a curriculum fusing digital art, engineering and entrepreneurship, has just applied for his 16th patent.

Sasso is also the lead engineer on an original, student-designed math game for children, and is developing his own unique VR game integrating Google Cardboard technology.

A well established software engineer, Sasso, 40, decided to enroll in Cogswell College to begin a new career path in hopes of fulfilling his dream of becoming a video game designer. He says, “I felt the education that Cogswell was offering would certainly be well worth my time and money. Sincerely, I was a bit unsure whether, at the age of 40, it was really a good idea for me to go back to school and to acquire the new knowledge necessary to propel a career change. But when I realized that I have been living for eight years so close to an accredited college that actually teaches people how to make video games at a professional level, I took it as a sign that I had to at least give my crazy idea a try!”

Jerome Solomon, Cogswell’s Dean of the College, Director of Game Design & Development, and Conference Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH 2017, adds, “Christian Sasso is truly an exceptional student and team member. He is also very smart. My goodness—he has 16 patents! An outstanding member of our Game Design Engineering concentration, we consider Christian a real rock star. I’ve found him to be a quick and sophisticated problem solver with a knack for elegant solutions. His accomplishments at our college have been impressive. He is well respected on campus and is really a great collaborator to work with.”

Currently serving as the Lead Engineer within Cogswell College’s “Game Studio 2 (Unity, C#,) Sasso is developing an original videogame called “Ingrid.”The project has been commissioned to Cogswell by external customer, Prairie Rainbow Company, which produces physical block-based games that are meant to teach children basic math skills.

The genesis of Sasso’s original VR game goes back to his participation, along with fellow student Steven Ulrich, in the recent, Cogswell-hosted 2015 Global Game Jam. During that event, the duo designed and implemented a virtual reality game, called “We R Ball,” for Google Cardboard using Unity and C#. The men created a maze generator with treasures scattered around, which uses a ball controlled by the player's gaze through a Google Cardboard VR headset.

One night during the 2015 Game Jam, Google was giving the cardboards away for free to all participants. The duo decided to develop their mini-game in a way that the only "controller" required would be the VR headset itself. This original VR game is currently under active development by Sasso and Ulrich in hopes of it being shown during SIGGRAPH 2015. To view a video of the prototype “We R Ball,” showing its basic mechanics, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ovGa9CrZuw

Currently the holder of 12 approved patents, Sasso, a former Cisco employee, has just been notified by Cisco lawyers that two of his patents have been filed worldwide, including Europe, South America, India, and China, as well as in the U.S. In addition, Sasso has four more patents that are still pending.

Sasso was a software developer (2013 to 2014) with Nest Labs, CA; was a software developer (2006 to 2012) with Cisco Systems, CA; and was also a software developer (2001 – 2006) with Andiamo Systems, CA. For each of those three companies, Sasso designed and implemented standard network protocols.

In the area of video games, Sasso, during his Fall 2014 Cogswell semester, designed and implemented in Objective C a video game for iOS devices that runs unmodified on both iPhones and iPads. To view a video of this game, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQpzByJ-Lsk&feature=youtu.be

In September 2014, Sasso won second place at the Ares Magazine's “Horror Game Design Contest,” having designed an original game along with fellow Cogswell student Deoel Noveno. Earlier (in 2001) he wrote a video game for the Android platform using the Java language. And in 2009, Sasso received an individual award for “Excellent Work on TCAM Layout Optimization” for his patent idea “Sub-Area FCID Allocation Scheme.”

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